GENIUS FORUMS

Nick Treklis wrote:

Philosophaster wrote:

Nick Treklis wrote:One ends up claiming certainty and uncertainty simultaneously, just like Fujaro has done. It is irrational, unreasonable, and entirely illogical, i.e. insane.

It would be stupid to do that, yes, but I don't see how avoidance of circular reasoning necessarily results in that.

Nick Treklis wrote:Philo,

Do you see how Fujaro's statements are a perfect example of Dan's explanation (A) when it comes to trying to side step "circular reasoning".

No. Care to explain?

Fujaro wrote:It is certain however that you can ever be certain that you're certain that you're reasoning correctly.

Did you mean "that you can never be certain?"

This is what it seems to come down to, then. Any "checking" of our reasoning processes must ultimately be circular, since the checking will itself rely on our reasoning. I guess whether we think of this as a bad thing and cause for doubt depends on whether we think of circular reasoning as...

Dan Rowden wrote:If you can question it, the ability exists.

Okay. But is there any non-circular way to verify that the ability is working correctly? I.e. some way that doesn't involve using your logical faculties to check whether your logical faculties are working right.

:-P

Dan Rowden wrote:If a thought can't be questioned without it being contradictory, what does its source have to do with it?

Nothing. But what I'm wondering about is our own ability to tell whether something is actually contradictory or not.

Hmm, okay.

I hadn't been around here in a long time.

From the "Beyond God and Evil" thread: Empirical phenomena are part of the world of appearances, which may or may not be hallucinatory, in which no certainty can be found. Pinning one's hopes on the existence of a particular empirical phenomenon, such as an alien god, doesn't help one to u...

David said: "Metals represent a certain amount of value, as it takes a certain amount of labor to extract them from the ground." I took "as" to mean "because," i.e. metals have value because there are labor costs for getting them out of the ground. His post didn't menti...

Metals represent a certain amount of value, as it takes a certain amount of labor to extract them from the ground. If the metals did not have that (market) level of value, then no one would bother to do the mining. Heh, that's more than a bit circular... "People have to labor to mine gold, so ...

Well, that's certainly a perspective I've heard here before. I think you paint with too broad a brush. On almost any philosophical question you'll find plenty of academics on either side.

Not surpisingly Adler is an eminent philosopher, probably highly esteemed within academic circles. Not really. Even in his time, lots of people saw him as a throwback, doing variations on the Cosmological Argument while other philosophers moved on to work in logic, epistemology, and philosophy of m...

An epitaph: Samadhi is/was the only one here I know (besides me) speaking the truth about enlightenment, abeit second hand knowledge, in defiance of the party line dogma of this little cult. I disagree with a lot of the "accepted" line of thinking here, but I haven't been banned, and I do...

I disagree though, if the reasons why the masses believe something is valuable aren’t sound than it isn’t a wise idea to put money in that thing, because if humanity collectively started to wake up in the next hundred years, and you owned a bunch of gold bonds, then guess what? They would be worthl...

The present belief in buying gold is based on a false assumption. Namely, that gold has value in and of itself. Moreover, I can understand why copper, zinc, nickel, and tin have some inherent value because they can be used to make things that humans need for survival. However, gold doesn’t quite fi...

Another thing that bugs me, Sam, is the way you equate "judgment" with "condemnation." A judgment is simply an assessment of a person or situation, and need not be condemnatory at all. I can see the point in trying to avoid mindless and self-blinding condemnation, but I don't see...

hmmm... Does this mean that love can safely be called a neurotic obsession? It certainly could be in many cases. Then, is there any problem with neurotic cell phone use, or is there only a problem in the eye of the beholder who sees it as an annoyance? Whether something is a "problem" dep...

Fujaro wrote:hmmm...
Does this mean that love can safely be called a neurotic obsession?

It certainly could be in many cases.

I don't think anyone was saying that cell phone use is morally wrong. That's just the faulty interpretive net that you cast on the conversation, Sam. I saw people talking about how cell phone use has become something of a neurotic obsession for many people, and also quite an annoyance in public pla...

TAWPDAWG wrote:Oh, so you're all just really unique people?

They tell retards that they're "unique" and "special".

What do they tell trolls?

Iolaus wrote:Says Philo,

Less fun.

But more joy.

Carl was the one who said that.

I don't think anyone was saying that cell phone use is morally wrong. That's just the faulty interpretive net that you cast on the conversation, Sam. I saw people talking about how cell phone use has become something of a neurotic obsession for many people, and also quite an annoyance in public plac...

Sam occasionally likes to cast himself as "defender of the regular guy." I have a feeling that if the thread were about the wisdom of voting Republican, Sam would be saying, "People like to vote for George Bush. Get over it."

I've noticed that as I've gotten older I haven't experienced emotional extremes (either extreme sadness or extreme happiness) nearly as often as I used to. Things seem to affect me a lot less, even things that always used to be able to provoke a big emotional response in me, like certain songs or bo...

Seemed random to me as well.